Interactive Narrative: An Intelligent Systems Approach

The goal of an interactive narrative system is to immerse users in a virtual world such that they believe that they are an integral part of an unfolding story and that their actions can significantly alter the direction or outcome of the story. In this article we review the ways in which artificial intelligence can be brought to bear on the creation of interactive narrative systems. We lay out the landscape of about 20 years of interactive narrative research and explore the successes as well as open research questions pertaining to the novel use of computational narrative intelligence in the pursuit of entertainment, education, and training. The prevalence of storytelling in human culture may be explained by the use of narrative as a cognitive tool for situated understanding (Gerrig 1993). This narrative intelligence -- the ability to organize experience into narrative form -- is central to the cognitive processes employed across a range of experiences, from entertainment to active learning.